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Barton: Beware prosecutors who persecute

It’s sometimes said that a competent prosecutor can convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That’s because the accused isn’t represented in these secret proceedings. There’s no judge either.

They can seem as one-sided as an arm-wrestling contest between Hulk Hogan and Pee Wee Herman.

But George Zimmerman, whose acquittal last weekend in the Trayvon Martin slaying triggered a week’s worth of anger and protests, wasn’t treated like ham on rye. He was never indicted for second degree murder or manslaughter by a grand jury in Sanford, Fla.

The special prosecutor that Florida Gov. Rick Scott appointed to handle this high-profile case, State Attorney Angela B. Corey of Jacksonville, chose to bypass the grand jury in Seminole County, overruling the decision her predecessor had made.

This was a critical move — and, in hindsight, a horribly irresponsible one.

Instead, Corey chose to go directly to a judge, who signed an arrest warrant for Zimmerman based on an affidavit that was so unprofessional that Harvard law professor and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz was aghast.

Dershowitz even suggested that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the special prosecutor.

What was in Corey’s affidavit?

What’s more significant is what she left out. There was no mention about Zimmerman’s broken nose. There was no mention about the bloody injuries to the back of his head. There was no mention of an eyewitness account that Martin was on top of Zimmerman hitting his head against the ground. Such information came out later during pre-trial discovery — after some people’s minds were already made up.

The affidavit upon which probable cause was found only mentioned that there was “a struggle.” It failed to suggest that Zimmerman, 29, was getting an old-fashioned whupping.

None of this excuses Zimmerman from being a total idiot. After he called 911 last year and reported his suspicions, he had no business getting out of his vehicle with his pistol on that dark, rainy night and following an innocent, unarmed teenager. Such recklessness set in motion a series of events that ended in tragedy — and an outpouring of nationwide anguish since his acquittal.

The prosecutor who works just down the road from Savannah in Jacksonville is on the hook for much of this pain and suffering.

Had she taken this shooting case to the grand jury, it’s highly unlikely the Neighborhood Watch captain would have been indicted on second degree murder charges. Even manslaughter would have been a stretch.

Instead, Corey caved in to political pressure to put Zimmerman in handcuffs. By doing so, she raised the public’s expectations. That explains the huge letdown and today’s anger.

The judge who signed the arrest warrant for Zimmerman, based on Corey’s blind zeal, should feel like a wadded-up Kleenex. It’s a good thing Corey practices in Duval County. After this prosecutorial hoodwinking, the only fair shake she can expect from a judge in Seminole County involves hands around a neck.

It’s amazing that Corey has kept her current job. Ron Littlepage, a columnist for the Florida Times-Union, a sister paper of the Savannah Morning News, has criticized Carey’s other egregious actions, like locking up a 12-year-old boy in solitary confinement in an adult jail prior to his court date. She had a hissy fit. She fired off a letter to editor Frank Denton, hinting at a libel action.

More recently, an IT worker in Corey’s office testified that prosecutors failed to turn over potentially exculpatory information from Trayvon Martin’s cellphone to Zimmerman’s defense team — information to which the defendant was legally entitled.

Corey fired him.

After the jury returned with its acquittal of Zimmerman, Corey still referred to the former defendant as a “murderer.” What a pro.

“I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case,” said Sandy D’Alemberte, a former president of the American Bar Association and Florida State University, in an interview with the Times-Union a year ago last March. “There is nothing in Angela Corey’s background that suits her for the task.”

Talk about prophetic.

Process matters in our criminal justice system. So do prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys doing their jobs. So do technical things like affidavits, warrants and indictments.

We are, after all, a nation of laws. Not people who can raise the most torches and pitchforks.

Had Corey taken the Zimmerman case to the grand jury, its weaknesses would have been exposed. Yes, people would have been upset had grand jurors tossed it. But the nation would have had a one-year head start on a needed conversation about the poison of racial stereotyping.

Zimmerman isn’t a ham sandwich. He seems more like Cheez Whiz on a cracker — as in not much there.

If Trayvon Martin’s tragic shooting jumpstarts honest talk about how people of different races can get along, at least something positive can result. Nothing good comes from prosecutors who act like persecutors.

Tom Barton is the editorial page editor for the Savannah Morning News.